Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.

Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.

To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.

Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.

Never assume that people in positions of responsibility are behaving responsibly.

Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.

And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

Books can change your life. Some of the most influential people in our lives are characters we meet in books.

My wife, the star I steer by.

Courage is contagious. If a leader shows courage, others get the idea.

Never accept the situation where you have the light but sufficient only for yourself! You must have an abundant light so that you may give to others!

Be yourself! Now that would be different!

[T]he State . . . gives idle capital the power of increase, and, through interest, rent, profit, and taxes, robs industrious labor of its products.

Truly charismatic people, in my experience, dont come along very often.

Moral certainty is never more than probability.

My own early experiences in war led me to suspect the value of discipline, even in that sphere where it is so often regarded as the first essential for success.

Color is life; for a world without color appears to us as dead. Colors are primordial ideas, the children of light.

one of the good things about being a woman is that my level of testosterone poisoning is lower than most men's.

I am like a book, with pages that have stuck together for want of use: my mind needs unpacking and the truths stored within must be turned over from time to time, to be ready when occasion demands.

Your heart pilots you to a far better life than you could have ever dreamed of. That's how the heart works.